Group proposes 24-step plan to clean Bay

Politics of postponement' must end

A high-powered group of politicians and scientists last week criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and instead offered its own 24-step strategy to restore the troubled estuary.

The group wants government regulators to move away from voluntary anti-pollution efforts.

Instead, it favors penalties for polluters. Stronger measures should be in place to limit agricultural pollutants, runoff from development and septic tank failures.

Thirty-eight people signed the letter, including former Govs. Harry R. Hughes and Parris N. Glendening, former U.S. Sen. Joseph D. Tydings, former U.S. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, state Sens. Brian E. Frosh and Paul G. Pinsky, former state Sens. Bernie Fowler and Gerald Winegrad and at least 10 scientists with doctorates.

"The politics of postponement has to stop now," said Winegrad, outlining years of federal and state promises to restore the Bay.

In May, the Obama administration announced it would oversee the Bay states' cleanup efforts. Long-range commitments were to be replaced with a series of two-year milestones.

On Dec. 29, the EPA issued a letter that described how it would hold states accountable for reducing pollution.

"The hope is the states as well as all our other partners will be able to meet their goals as well as the two-year milestones," said Shawn Garvin, regional administrator for the EPA's mid-Atlantic region.

Because of years of inaction and intense lobbying from agriculture and development, the time for action is now, Tydings said.

William Dennison, vice president for science applications at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said the Chesapeake needed to go on a "Weight Watchers" plan that would limit the amount of nutrients flowing into its waters, whether from farms, residential developments or treatment plants.

Fowler, 85, recalled how the Bay and the Patuxent River fed his family and his neighbors during the Great Depression. He lamented that farming organizations are fighting the caps that would limit the pollution entering the Bay.

"Without the cappings, you'll never live long enough to see the Chesapeake Bay come back to any semblance of what it was in the 1950s or '60s," he said.